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Strong Women
On the brink of burnout? It might be time to schedule a ‘parasympathetic day’
8 months ago
5 min read
If you often arrive at work stressed and unrested on a Monday morning, it might be time to reconsider how you spend your weekends. Here, a physiologist and a neuroscientist explain the importance of downtime and whether or not a day full of intentionally calming activities should become a regular part of your routine.
Have you ever reached the end of the weekend, only to realise you feel just as tired as you did at the start? Us too.
When you’re trying to juggle a social life, family responsibilities, taking care of your health and fitness and good old-fashioned life admin, it’s easy to find yourself feeling a little low on energy – even after a few days off. And while most of us can handle feeling a little bit tired every so often, feeling this way every week is enough to reach full-on burnout.
So, what’s the solution? Siffat Haider, podcaster and the founder of supplements brand Arrae, is a fan of something she has called a ‘parasympathetic day’.
But what is a ‘parasympathetic day’? And how can it help us feel more refreshed? We asked the experts to explain.
What is a ‘parasympathetic day’?
The term ‘parasympathetic day’ refers to the parasympathetic nervous system, aka the side of your nervous system responsible for that relaxing ‘rest and digest’ state. As the opposite to ‘fight or flight’, spending time in this state is crucial for helping to lower your cortisol levels and help your body recharge.
However, as physiologist and Future Practice co-founder Oliver Patrick explains, the modern world isn’t exactly set up to help us reach this state.
“As we see incidences of stress related disease and dysfunction rise, this seems to correlate with an absence of time spent in a parasympathetic state,” says Patrick. “The parasympathetic system should be considered as the human battery being put on charge, but most modern day inventions such as continual light, continual noise, continual stimulation and continual working patterns are disabling the parasympathetic and correlating with an increase in stress-related disorders.”
In light of this, the idea of a ‘parasympathetic day’ is simply to spend more time in a parasympathetic state to help you recharge mentally and physically when you’re feeling stressed or burnt out. As Haider explained on her Dream Bigger podcast:
“For a long time I would end my weekend and I’d go into Monday and I’d be like, ‘damn, I’m so tired’, and it would just feel like my weekends weren’t really restful because I’d find things to fill up my time, whether that was tons of social things or going out and about, running errands, and then I’d go into the week and I’d be tired. So I was like, OK, I need a day for rest and recharge, and so that is going to be my full parasympathetic day.”
What should a parasympathetic day involve?
Although similar, a parasympathetic day isn’t quite interchangeable with a duvet day or bed rot. It’s a time for taking intentional action to calm your nervous system. Of course, this absolutely could include sofa naps and bingeing Bridgerton, but alongside activities such as walking, stretching and meditating, for instance.
Speaking on the podcast, Haider says that she has no social plans on parasympathetic days, nor does she workout. “I’m just doing things that really help soothe me, and I do any personal appointments that I have. I like to use that time to meal prep, I’ll do a big tidy of the house so I’m going into the week feeling really good.”
Conversely, Patrick recommends low-intensity aerobic or cardio respiratory exercise, which he says has an incredible ability to activate the parasympathetic system. “In addition, there’s a strong correlation between parasympathetic tone and nature, so a walk outside would be a fantastic intervention,” he says.
Nicole Vignola, neuroscientist and author of Rewire, also suggests using breathwork, meditation and yoga to help soothe your nervous system and enter the rest and digest state, as well as engaging in hobbies which bring you joy.
“By completely immersing yourself in something else, such as a hobby, you give your mind a break so that you can think about something else temporarily,” she explains. “This alleviates stressful thoughts, and means that when you come back to them after engaging in your hobby, you generally have a more logical mindset, or have learned to let go by then.”
Are parasympathetic days a good idea?
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While dedicating a day to soothing your nervous system is certainly worthwhile, Vignola says the goal should be to develop a nervous system that is adaptable and capable of effectively managing stress on a daily basis.
“A resilient nervous system should seamlessly transition between the sympathetic and parasympathetic states so that we don’t linger in either state,” she says. “This means being able to activate the sympathetic nervous system to handle immediate challenges, increasing alertness and energy, and then efficiently shifting to the parasympathetic state to relax and recover once the stressor has passed.”
However, the reality is that many of us struggle to shift between systems fluidly. “When reviewing people’s parasympathetic tone using heart rate variability in clinical practice, we often notice there’s very little time spent in waking hours with the body in the parasympathetic system,” says Patrick. This means that many people are only recovering during sleep, and spending no time in waking hours with their body in rest and digest mode.
So, with this in mind, do the experts consider a parasympathetic day – as opposed to regularly engaging in parasympathetic-promoting activities – advisable? Ultimately, both recommend doing what works best for you, your body and your current circumstances.
“There is research to support that having lazy days is good for us,” says Vignola. “However, I would say that we should learn to listen to our bodies. For instance, some weeks we may need more rest days than just one, and other weeks we may feel like we want to get up and move on the weekend. I think it’s important to do as we feel and not restrict ourselves to do something just because it’s a trend.”
She suggests that learning coping mechanisms for managing stress in the moment may help you shift more effectively between both nervous systems so you don’t build up a figurative backlog of overwhelm to wade through. “Say, for example, you get cut off in traffic and that triggers a stressful response. Doing a breathing technique afterwards can help you recover from that stress so you don’t carry it into the rest of your day,” says Vignola.
Other useful techniques to have in your nervous system toolkit include mindfulness, progressive muscle relaxation and hand warming.
Images: Getty
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